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Lophelia II 2008
Lophelia II 2008: Deepwater Coral Expedition: Reefs, Rigs, and Wrecks
September 20 - October 2, 2008
This is the first cruise of a 4-year project funded by the
US Mineral Management Service (MMS) and the NOAA
Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER) to explore
new deepwater coral communities at both natural and man-made
sites. The goal of this project is to discover new coral sites
in the deep Gulf of Mexico and characterize them
in terms of coral habitat characteristics, biology, ecology,
and genetic connectivity.
The diverse group of experienced investigators on this project
will use a combination of remote sensing, photographic sampling,
quantitative community collections, live coral manipulative
experiments, geologic characterization, oceanographic measurements,
and genetic analyses to further our understanding of cold
water corals and the communities associated with them.
This is the first year of the project and the second leg of
this cruise investigating a series of previously unexplored
sites along the northern Gulf of Mexico between 300 and 1000m.
The initial phase of this project has consisted of poring
over the extensive bathymetric and 3-dimensional seismic data
held by MMS to select the sites they will be visiting. Although
past surveys have generated a series of good maps of these
sites, they will be the first eye on the bottom at almost
all of their sites.
The first leg of this year's cruise examined ship
wrecks and the corals colonizing them. During this second
leg, they will be using the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster
and the SeaEye Falcon ROV to scout out these new
sites, run large scale photographic surveys and make collections
of a few key species.
In the spring they plan to mount a second expedition to explore
additional new sites, many in waters deeper than 1000m. In
the second and third years of the project they will also conduct
additional mapping surveys and examinations of coral colonization
on oil rigs.
The third and fourth cruises will be larger interdisciplinary
expeditions where much of the intensive physical and photographic
sampling of the coral species and associated communities will
take place.
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